Phantom 3 Professional - ESC Failure in Flight/Crash!

My P3P Crashed!  But the GPS Location was perfect...

To make a long story short:  DJI replaced my P3P with a new (I presume that it was a refurbished) P3P.  They didn't say that they would and they charged me about $90 for an hour of labor and some camera gimbal servos, but in the end, I believe that it was worth it.  I had repaired the cracks and so I had been inside the P3P.  They gave me a good, and fair replacement.  I'd certainly buy from DJI again, I believe that they are an honorable company.

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I walked right up to my Phantom 3 Professional after it crashed.  I was flying in FPV mode with Litchi and everything was proceeding normally until my drone started fluttering/spinning in the sky at 334 feet altitude and fell right to the ground.  What happened!  There was very little time to react, even if there was something that I could do.  I recall that I commanded a full up left stick to try and reduce the rate of decent but the whole event lasted about 11 seconds.

The total air time was only 1 minute and 41 seconds.  There was no prior indication of the upcoming ESC failure, other than an uncommanded 180 degree right turn 20 seconds before total failure.  

Gosh, that's a lot of energy and it showed on the fuselage. But as it turns out, the actual impact speed was about 1/2 of the free-fall calculations.  Those other three motors were trying there best to remedy the situation but there was no hope.   A quad simply cannot fly with only three good motors.  ( Update:  As it turns out, a quad CAN fly with only 3 motors, but a DJI Phantom 3 Pro can't and this seems to be a software issue)

This is a classic video of an ESC failure in flight.   Hopefully, DJI will agree and replace my IMU board and bent 4k camera.  I'm heartsick that the drone that I've hand caught for over 200 flights and more than 29 hours of flight time just face planted into the ground!!!


Are you kidding me!
Just when I thought DJI was the pinnacle of quad technology, something like this is on YouTube from 5 years ago!  In other words, Abigail didn't have to crash!  Let's see what DJI does.

https://youtu.be/w2itwFJCgFQ

Take a look at the video above, it'll amaze you!

Update:  DJI First reply:

"Dear Customer, Unfortunately, damage that is not caused by a product malfunction or is out of the warranty period is not covered by DJI aftersales policy. We will either repair it or replace it with a product that's new or equivalent to new in both performance and reliability after payment has been received. For more information, please visit http://www.dji.com/service/policy DJI North America" Update December 2017:  Although the form letter said that the crash wouldn't be covered by warranty, I received back a newly refurbished Phantom 3 Professional. (Actually, it turned out to be a Phantom 3 Advanced with a 4K camera attached.  The range was noticeably lower than the Pro)   Before I sent it back, I applied the plast-aid fix to the rear motor mounts, but this fix was not there so they must have provided a new body and a new camera and a new main board. So I'm very happy with what I received back from DJI, the total time for repair was about 3 weeks and the new quad is flying well.  It has a different serial number and no wear on the serial number sticker which occurs by taking the battery in and out over time so this is a newly refurbished quad.  I'll let you know how it goes, but I'm happy with DJI again!